


Sub Manu Tua

by starcunning



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: (Two separate things here), BDSM, Caning, Dom Drop, Established Relationship, F/M, Face Slapping, Femdom, Hair-pulling, Heavy BDSM, Mild Blood, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Pegging, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Shasiverse, Strap-Ons, all the negotiation was off screen before this, guided masturbation, it's not really a focus, stress positions, there are some allusions to shasi's polyamorous relationship with thancred, they have like two years apart to make up for, we pack a lot in here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 21:17:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20142124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starcunning/pseuds/starcunning
Summary: But he was hers anywhere. He was hers as she threw him to his knees so that he had to look up at her. Her face was radiant with anger, her bright blue eyes fixed upon him. So lost in the sight was he that the first slap caught him by surprise. The blow made him turn his head, flesh stinging. She caught him on the other cheek a moment later.“You took your time in getting here,” Shasi said.It was the appointed hour. Still, that was not what she meant, and he bowed his head. “Forgive me, Domina,” Zenos said.





	Sub Manu Tua

**Author's Note:**

> This relationship was established in a fic I have yet to import to AO3, _This Beast That Rends Me._ For now you can read it [on my tumblr.](https://starcunning.tumblr.com/post/181001326849/this-beast-that-rends-me) To catch you up to speed:  
Zenos doesn't die at the end of 4.0 MSQ but is held for questioning and embarks on a relationship with Warrior of Light X'shasi Kilntreader, who succeeds in not so much inculcating her values, but using his fixation on her to guide him to something vaguely approaching morality. He is the Resonant that joins the 4.1 Lakshmi fight rather than Fordola, and having become public knowledge he stood trial and was executed.
> 
> Turns out people with the Echo, even artificially, are harder to kill than that. Zenos still spends 5.0 in Garlemald in search of Elidibus, but he does so with the Scions' knowledge and Estinien as his escort. Shasi issues orders using Feo Ul as her intermediary. This fic takes place shortly after Zenos regains his original body--but he fails to kill Varis. Okay, go.

It was not really possible for Zenos to be nervous, and yet something sat in the core of him. Anticipation, perhaps—this high-strung feeling was like that moment just before he laid his hand upon his sword; the instant where he judged his strike. Only _she_ had succeeded in enkindling that sensation in him; even the Ascian had proven a disappointment. She was responsible for it now, as she had been so often.

Her house in the Goblet was not terribly remarkable but for the fact that it belonged to X’shasi Kilntreader—eikon-slayer; crystal-bearer; saviour. Nothing about the plot itself nor the structure built upon it betrayed that fact; it looked much like any other might. It was close to the precipice of the butte, the land falling away not far from her fence to offer an unimpeded view of the sunset. He did not stop to admire it, only stepped into the long shadow of the building itself and lifted a hand to knock.

The door opened, and her fist was in his hair already, dragging him into the house. His scalp stung, and he bent at the waist to ease it, stumbling where she led. There was a thrill in her touch that had been absent for moons—for years, even, and for a moment he stood not in a stone house in Ul’dah but in a glass conservatory in Ala Mhigo. Where she had kept him; where she had claimed him.

But he was hers anywhere. He was hers as she threw him to his knees so that he had to look up at her. Her face was radiant with anger, her bright blue eyes fixed upon him. So lost in the sight was he that the first slap caught him by surprise. The blow made him turn his head, flesh stinging. She caught him on the other cheek a moment later.

“You took your time in getting here,” Shasi said.  
It was the appointed hour. Still, that was not what she meant, and he bowed his head. “Forgive me, Domina,” Zenos said.  
“Why should I?” she wondered. “You have made no apologies; you have paid no penances. If you want my forgiveness, you’ll have to earn it.” Casually she backhanded him again; the ring of amethyst and gold she wore cut him across the cheek, and he felt his blood trickle over the skin.  
“I misspoke,” he told her, his eyes downcast. Already he was aware in the change in his own breathing, attuned to the violence in the air. “What I meant to say is ‘I am sorry, Domina.’”  
Her gaze slipped from his, fixing instead upon his cheek. Her hand fisted in his hair again, pulling him up, into her mouth. To call it a kiss was to call the inferno a campfire; she pressed into him recklessly, harshly, biting at him. She plundered him, her breath feathering over his cheeks as it shuddered out of her in the space between their mouths. “Prove it,” she growled. She seized his face with both hands, the nail of her thumb tracing along that little cut, making it sting.  
“Tell me what to do,” he pleaded. It seemed far too soon to beg, but this was all he had wanted since he saw her again; by that measure it was rather too late. “I am yours to command.”  
“I knew that already,” she said, her lips curling in a wicked smile.  
“I would do anything you asked of me, Domina.”  
She tilted her head, regarding him a moment. “You really believe that,” she said. The affirmation leapt to his tongue, but she continued before he could speak. “I will test you on it.”  
There was relief in the words as much as dread. “Thank you, Domina.”  
She held her hand out to him so that he could kiss her ring. His blood stained the stone, tasting like iron as he bent his head to oblige. “Get undressed,” she said. “You may not rise above your knees.”

He yearned for her touch even as she stepped away, callused hands slipping from his skin. She circled him, and he listened for her footsteps and the sound of her breathing as she disappeared from the line of his sight, but he dared not turn his head. Instead he fumbled with the clasps of his cloak. His hands did not shake; he had never been nervous in all his life, and yet it seemed he could not be stripped of his clothing soon enough. He was unusual enough in Eorzea—too tall and far too broad; much too likely to be recognized—even when he did not wear the chiton to which he had grown accustomed, but he missed it. It had been such a simple thing to undress himself before her then. Now there was hood and mantle and coat to think of; tunic and breeches and pattens. He folded each and laid them aside over the arm of her couch. Zenos presumed she watched, but it was impossible to tell; if she looked on she reacted in no way he could discern.

Then again, whatever new scars this body had come by were more than likely at her hand. He liked to believe so: that nothing had marked this adamant flesh but her.

The trousers were certainly the worst of it; it was simple enough to work them down over his thighs, then one knee at a time, but he ended up kneeling on the buttons. He relished these small torments, in truth; they kept him present, so he did not dwell overlong on what was to come. Whatever it was, he would welcome that too. Soon he knelt naked on the stone floor of her home, and he felt the warmth of her hand but a moment before her fingers closed upon his scalp once more.

“Stand up,” she said, and he murmured an affirmative as he rose. Her hand at the nape of his neck complicated matters, though, so that even when he stood he was bent at the waist, staring down at the floor—his bare feet beside her, in boots. She led him deeper into the house, and let go of him at the top of the stairs. “Go on,” she said, and he did, listening to her boot heels behind him. When he reached the landing he bent over once more, and her hand skimmed up his spine, between his shoulder blades, taking hold of his hair once more. “Good,” she murmured.

How he had craved that.

Her bedroom was dimly lit, their shadows flickering in the candlelight. Zenos thought for a moment about the feeling of wax against his skin—rivulets of heat that splashed and settled against his skin, coating him, leeching into him, lingering—and licked his lips in anticipation.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.  
“The candles,” he said. “What the wax might feel like against my skin.”  
Her hand tightened in his hair, though she shoved the heel of her hand down so that he would not stand. His scalp throbbed. “What should you be thinking about?”  
“You, Domina,” he said instantly.  
“And?”  
“And the commands you have given me.”  
“It’s not your job to think about the candles,” she said. “We won’t be using them today in any case. Good to know, though.”  
“My apologies, Domina.”

She pushed him then, leaving him sprawling against the edge of her bed. The ache lingered at the back of his neck, his unbound hair spilling about his shoulders.  
“Kneel,” she said, and he scrambled to pull his legs up under him. He sat back on his haunches, and she laughed. “Lean forward,” she instructed, skimming a hand over his spine to press between his shoulder blades. Soon his knees were pressed against his chest. “Hands behind your back.” He crossed his wrists obediently, his fingers curled into loose fists. “Bring yourself up,” she said then, “just an ilm or two, so that you’re not sitting on your heels.” He did, feeling his thighs tense. For a moment he struggled to find his balance, and was sorely tempted to plant a hand atop the bed, but she had ordered his arms back, and so he simply struggled. Eventually he found his equilibrium. She patted his flank. “Good,” she said. “Now stay like that.”

Her footsteps were muted on the carpets that covered the floor, but he could hear her shuffle away. Still there was no telling whether she was looking at him or not, and he dared not relinquish the position anyway. He could feel the tension build in his thighs and glutes, his muscles straining to hold him aloft when the far more natural thing to do would be to relax and rest atop his calves. She had anticipated this, of course; some part of him was touched by that attention to detail. Her demanding exactitude required him to maintain the pose though he could already imagine the burning in his muscles.

“You know, I quite like that sight,” she said a moment later.  
“I am happy it pleases you, Domina,” he murmured.

He felt the warmth of her at his back, not quite near enough to touch, before she reached out to lay a hand upon his thigh. Curling her fingers, her nails dug into his skin, raking upward over his leg and the curve of his hip, passing to his back to palm his ass. She gave it a little slap, and he fought to be still, to maintain his balance and his perfect poise, back arching.

She pulled her hand away, but he did not hear her muffled footfalls; the sound of her breathing did not change. She was still there, so close to him—so far away, beyond his ability to touch. He could feel himself stirred by her very nearness, but could not afford to focus on it, all his attention demanded by the control of his body and his fixation on her proximity.

The cold caught him by surprise, drizzled down over the cleft of his ass without warning. He tensed, fighting the urge to arch away. She laughed, and ran a slick finger over his backside, circling the pucker there. She pressed into him a moment later, and he hissed at the sting of it. She reached out to take him by the hip with her other hand, as though she could hold him in place; as though he might even dare try and flee from this.

The sensation prickled through his nerves; he felt it in his tingling scalp almost as much as from her touch itself, as though she had discovered some secret cord that ran through him. Certainly it made his cock jump, his heretofore slowly-rising arousal at a full burn now. As much or more than the sensation was the casual ownership inherent in her touch; she did not seem timid at all as she worked him open, that first finger pressing and questing.

Zenos longed to do nothing more than drink it in, to relax and press back against her hand, but it was taking everything in him merely to keep his weight from his heels. The second finger did not help—it stretched and spread him, splayed apart inside him, and he could not help but groan.

“You missed me,” she said. It was not a question.  
Still, he found the breath to answer. “Yes, Domina.”  
She only laughed at that, fucking him with her fingers, her nails running backwards over his skin to reach for his shoulder. Her body pressed against his side as she did, and though it meant her weight rested against him, he bore it gladly for the sake of feeling her breath against his back. “You should never have left me,” she said, and though there was a growling in her tone it was not entirely absent her yearning, either.  
She was right, of course. “No, Domina,” he groaned. “I am yours,” he said then; “do with me what you will.”  
“You are always mine,” she replied, and he bit back a guttural cry—not simply because it was true, but because she pressed her fingers mercilessly against him and his cock surged with sensation. It was far, far too soon, and he set his teeth against the feeling, not wanting it to end, not sure how long it could continue. “You will repay me,” she said, “for every moment stolen from me.”  
“Yes,” he hissed. “Yes, Domina, please …” She yanked her hand away, her weight leaving him, and he found himself suddenly bereft; suddenly empty. “Please.”  
All she said in reply then was “Relax.”

He did, letting his weight fall with a groan. Zenos trembled in the wake of it, his breath tearing raggedly through his throat, and so consumed by relief was he that he was caught entirely by surprise at the feeling of cold metal pressed against his ass.

His instinct was to tense again, but he found he had not the strength; his thighs ached and trembled and did not lift him. Her hand found his hip again, and he laid there with his chest against his knees, panting and sighing. The plug was metal—cold and unyielding as the blade—and stretched him mercilessly around his taper. She thrust it against him slowly but inexorably. When it settled in him, cold and heavy, he could not help the way he clenched around it. She brushed her hand against him, wiping her fingers off against his skin.

“Up,” she said. He wanted to whine, to protest, but he dared not; he dared do nothing but obey, though an ache surged through his muscles just the same. He could feel himself bear down more tightly, grasping at the neck of the plug, its weight unmoving, its steel unyielding. He heard her rubbing her hands together, and a moment later a cool, damp cloth laved over the curve of his ass. She spread him apart, wiping away the lubricant still clinging to his skin with cool detachment. There was no sentimentality to the clinical gesture, though she was a great deal more thorough than she needed to be.

“Assume the position,” she instructed, and this too he hastened to obey. He was almost glad to be standing, though his thighs ached—this at least was an easier position to maintain, bracing his hands against the lip of the ledge on the far side of her bed. “How sloppy,” she said a moment later. “Legs straight.” He corrected himself as she instructed, and she rattled off a further list of critiques. These too he hastened to obey: “Arch your back. Head up. Shoulders back. Don’t move.”  
The cool water still clinging to his skin made him altogether too sensitive to the movement of the air in the room. He swore he could feel her breath stirring over him, and was so fascinated by it that for a moment he forgot all he knew about wet skin.  
“Since you were late,” she said, “we don’t have time for a warm-up.” Cold fear gripped him, surging through him with such a roar that he almost didn’t hear her question. “How long did you keep me waiting?”  
He forgot, then, what numbers were. It was the fullness of summer when they parted, and he did not return to her until nearly the following spring; she went to the First and he to Garlemald some moons after that, and then … “Two … two years?” he said. It was his best guess.  
“Two is hardly anything,” she said, scoffing. “Twenty-four moons in two years … that seems appropriate. Count them,” she said.  
“Yes, Domina,” he replied.

The first blow did not come immediately, as he feared it might. Rather, he felt nothing but the air upon his wet skin. His back, already arched, tensed further, but bent as he was he could hardly brace himself for the blow, whenever it came. No warm-up. He had endured so much, yet still he feared to make a fool of himself; to disappoint her.

The pain was intense, radiant; for a moment nothing else existed. The dampness of his skin seemed to make him feel it more keenly, as though he could feel the touch of every fiber of the cane. It felt so very much like a blade’s edge, on the very few occasions he had allowed himself to be cut. Perhaps that was why he liked it—as much as he hated it, he liked it—and then the sensation blossomed, rippling through him such that a quarter-ilk stripe across his buttocks seemed to claim the whole of his body. The plug filled him, resisted his attempts to tense. The weight of it was a reminder, an anchor, an additional torment. He could feel himself panting. There was something he had to do, wasn’t there? Something—the cane rasped against his skin, drawn over the welt, and he cried out again. Air rushed over his wet skin, over that hot line, too sensitive by far. Numbers. That was it—count them. “One,” he groaned with the last of his breath. He sucked down another lungful of air, trying to find some manner of control. “Thank you, Domina; may I have another?”

She gave it to him and he was not ready for it then either. The pain was more intense; redoubled. The second stroke rekindled the fire of the first, and his control was an illusion; sensation ran away with him. His breath rasped over his lips, panicky and shallow, and he fought it, tried to claw his way back on top of the sensation. He could not tense and yet he had to; the plug offered him no reprieve. He was adamant steel in any other situation, but she reduced him to something bestial. He hated that; he craved it. He asked for the next stroke.

And the next, and the next. Even as the pain mounted it seemed easier to bear, and soon he was through the first set of six. He could feel the heat radiating between the even, parallel stripes she laid across his backside. It was much as he remembered; worse than he feared and more wonderful than he had craved. Sensation suffused him. Sweat trickled over his back, along the curve of his ribs. The reprieve seemed to last for ages, and then she dug the tip of her cane into his flank, pressing it into one of the perfect welts already being raised.

“You have eighteen more to go,” she reminded him. “This delay is cowardly. Or do you not want them?”  
“I want them,” he said. Already his voice was hoarse. “May I have them?”  
“You deserve them,” she said.

The pause was not a kindness, he realized at once. It allowed the seventh stroke to land as freshly as the first, and he fought to breathe with it, to let his breath out evenly and ask for the next stroke, inhaling as the next blow fell. It striped him across the top of his thighs, searing and bright, harder still to endure than anything that had come before.

The sound of his cry filled the room, throwing his head back. Then he let it fall, his hair hanging down around his face as he let out the rest of his breath. “Eight,” he said.  
“No,” she replied. “What kind of posture is that? Be still.”  
“I am sorry, Domina,” he said, feeling it with every nerve in his body, each of them aflame.  
“We’ll start the set over,” she told him. “The next is the seventh. Beg me for it.”  
“Please, Domina,” he said. Tears pricked his eyes, the horizon slipping away from him. “Please let me begin again; let me do it correctly this time.”  
“Why should I?” she asked.  
“I deserve them,” he moaned.  
“That is true,” Shasi said, “but that isn’t why. Why should I let you start over?”  
“Because,” he said. He shook his head. His hair was growing a bit lank, damp at the roots with his sweat. “Because I need to make it up to you.”  
“I see. Should you be thinking about your needs?”  
“No, Domina.”  
“No,” she agreed. “I should be thinking about that. All you should be thinking about is giving me what I ask of you. The things I want.”  
“Do you want me to start over?” he asked. There was a thread of desperation in his voice. The only thing worse than being caned was the idea that it might end then. That he had let it get away from him; that he could not finish what they had begun, as he so desperately longed to do.  
“Yes,” she said.  
“Then please, Domina, _please_ may I have another?”

She was merciful and gave it to him, and then the eighth, and then the ninth, and only then did he feel right. Only then did he feel like he was moving forward. The pain was not everything, then—she was everything. The searing pain of the blows as they fell, the way sensation radiated up his spine, these were her gifts to him, and he wept with joy to receive them, greeting each with a bestial cry. His vision blurred as the tears fell and commingled with the sweat rolling from his forehead.

In the pause between sets she changed canes, and the blows settled deeper. He was glad of it; it kept him alive to sensation. To her. He struggled to keep himself upright, rigid in the correct position, clenched too tight around that heavy plug, but he had to finish; the need was in his blood and poured out of him just the same.

When he counted twenty-four, he asked for another. She laughed—and then she struck him him with such force and precision that he repented of it, striped across the upper thigh. He all but collapsed atop the bed then, but clung to the edge in front of him with damp, desperate fingers.

“You’re done,” she said.  
“Thank you, Domina,” he replied. It took him a long moment to push himself to standing. He could feel the heat radiating from the rising welts, and the sweat that had trickled down his back stung against his skin, paler echoes of all he had endured.  
“Lie down,” she said, indicating the carpeted floor underfoot.

He struggled to be graceful, but managed somehow to do anything other than collapse in a heap. She towered over him, a strange reversal given how much taller than her he was. Zenos swore he could feel every fiber in the carpet and they were all rough against his skin.  
“Bend your knees,” she told him. He groaned as he did, bruising flesh drawn taut. “Lift your hips,” she instructed. “Higher. Higher …”  
Zenos arched himself backward, up from the floor, his weight driven through his heels. His thighs tensed, as did the muscles in his ass, and it reignited the pain there. Impossible to ignore from this angle, too, was his erection, twitching against his stomach as though desperate for her to take notice.  
If she saw it, though, she made no comment, and her gaze rested only upon his face. “Close your eyes,” she said.

He did, and his world narrowed to the sensations thrumming through his body and the sounds of her moving around him. This position should have been nothing for him to hold, but his thighs were sore already from his earlier exertions—to say nothing of the caning he had not only endured but enjoyed. Her breathing was even, and he struggled to match her, clenching his eyes shut against the temptation to steal a peek. There was nothing to be done for the third, of course, but it granted him no true sight, only an awareness of the ways she moved around him, giving some small context to the sounds he heard.

“Do you want to fuck me, Zenos?” she purred.  
He had not the words to answer at first, need surging through him and pressing a groan from between his lips. “Yes, Domina,” he breathed.  
“I might let you,” she said, letting the thought dangle. “Keep your hips up.”

The groan that escaped him then was for another reason entirely, and he almost missed the sound of her dropping to her knees. Her movements then were quick and efficient, fastening a strap about his hips and two more against his thighs. A harness, he realized, the leather supple—but even that was too much for his tormented flesh.

“Look at me,” she said. He opened his eyes, but dared not turn his head. She had undressed while he had held the position, and was nude but for a coil of rope around one forearm. He saw then plainly what he had only glimpsed and surmised before: she bore new muscles and new scars; a new hardness. She was fierce and beautiful as he laid at her feet, his thighs trembling. But it was not really her that she wanted him to look at, he realized as she reached out to undo the fasteners at the front of the harness. She wanted him to watch, and he did, as she set the dildo in place, smooth and polished and resting heavily against the base of his cock. “Relax,” she said, and he didn’t so much do that as collapse into the carpet, feeling it burn against his flesh anew. She stepped over him, lips twitching upward in a cruel smile: “You can’t be tired already,” Shasi said; “I still have use for you. You are going to fuck me. Now.”  
His gaze flicked downward to the polished stone shaft that jutted from the harness. “Yes, Domina,” he said.

She settled herself into the bed with a sigh, as though she were the one who had just endured a caning. “Now,” she echoed, impatient, letting a hand dangle off the side of the bed to catch him by the hair as he sat up. She pulled him into bed atop her, and she let go of his hair, slapping him across the face as she withdrew her hand.  
He knelt there between her thighs, reeling as much from the sight of her splayed out beneath him as the blow that still tingled against his cheek.  
“If you’re not inside me in the next five seconds you will never have the opportunity again, Zenos,” she told him through gritted teeth.  
“Yes, Domina,” he yelped, and put all questions from his mind. He bent himself over her, taking hold of the base of the dildo with one hand and bracing his weight on the other, and pressed it into her.

She arched and sighed, wrapping her legs around his waist. Her heels pressed against his thighs, and he yelped with pain, driven forward by his desire to escape that pressure. It was amazing how easily he slid into her, as though she, too, ached. She reached up to grasp the base of his neck again, pulling his mouth down to hers, and she kissed him. It was vicious, forcing his mouth open so that she could take the taste of him, her teeth raking his flesh. His breath shuddered out of him, spilled over her scarred cheek, but she showed no sign of letting him withdraw. Held against her, he could feel the heat of her body against his, taut with anticipation, almost smothering—everywhere but where he wanted most to feel her.

His erection was trapped against his body by the harness, squashed uncomfortably against his skin, the base of the dildo unyielding and hard even through the padding. He was so, so close to her and so achingly far away, and the way she sighed felt like it could not possibly be his doing.

She relinquished her hold at last, but looped her arms around his chest. A moment later he felt the coils of rope slithering over his back, dangling between his legs. She reached down, snaking a hand between their bodies to catch at the trailing edge, and the rope settled into the cleft of his ass. It was soft enough, but it jostled the plug inside him, making his cock twitch. Of course, he realized. He rolled his hips backward, and she drew the cord taut. It was impossible then to withdraw any further, so he sank into her once more, and she groaned softly.

“May I touch you?” he asked, and his voice was soft not only because he had shouted himself hoarse, but because this was not a question that he dared ask aloud.  
“Yes,” she said, making of the single word a lingering sigh.  
He wanted to weep with relief then, and when he said “Thank you, Domina,” the words all but trembled out of him.

He ran a hand along her flank, up over her hip and side, reveling in the simple pleasure of feeling her skin beneath his hand. Zenos bowed his head, kissing at her throat and her collarbone, and he felt the rope slacken enough that he could move.

How strange it felt to rut himself against her and feel nothing—well, not nothing, but to be so divorced from sensation. Every thrust jostled the plug inside him, making his cock jump. Her fingernails bit into his back, and her heels dug into his thighs, pulling him back into her. It was enough, it had to be enough, simply to touch her. To feel his breath feather over her skin, her muscles drawn taut, her breasts crushed against his chest. He wanted her closer still, as though that would abate his craving, his all-consuming need.

She wanted him closer, too, because she hauled in on the rope, drawing away its slack. Buried deep inside her as he could get, his hand locked against her hip, he still could not feel enough of her. The pressure against the plug was intense, and he thought that perhaps even the friction of the harness might be enough, but then she stretched her neck upward to kiss at him, from his jaw down to the slope of his shoulder. Her tongue laved over his pulse, and he groaned.

Her teeth tore at him, desperate to consume him, and he welcomed the sensation. The prick of pain ignited him, and he thrashed against her, frenzied and wanton. Desperate. She moaned against his skin, and almost that might be enough—but he did not need to ask to know he would not be allowed to come. Still, why deny her the pleasure?  
“Domina,” he groaned. “Please, please let me …”  
“No,” she growled, and bit down more fiercely. Her nails striped his back, her heels pressed against the welts on his thighs. He wanted to slow, to feel the pressure abate, to stave off his rising need, but when he tried she reined him in like an unruly warhorse, grinding her hips against him, her thighs tense.

He could hear himself panting, his body rocking against hers. His cock ached, but he found no relief, only the pain of being pressed against the base of the dildo or the too-sweet pressure of pulling back against the rope. It stoked his ardor, and he found some new reserve of strength to press her into the bed, to fuck her still deeper, grinding his hips against hers.

She cried out sharply, and he felt the rope go slack. Zenos drew back only enough to look upon her face—her eyes pressed shut, her neck arching, chin lifted. Her lips parted to emit some low, animal moan, and he surged with pride to watch her come—to have made her come; to have been allowed that privilege for the first time in years. She shuddered beneath him, arching and frotting herself, wringing out aftershocks, her own desperate hunger laid bare. Then she laid back against the bed, panting and sighing. Her eyes opened, hazy and unfocused until she fixed her gaze on him.

She slapped him, with more force than her slack muscles should have allowed.

He shook his head in the wake of it, his lank hair rippling around him. “Domina?” he asked.  
“You call that fucking,” she said, laughter burbling over her lips. “Get off me. I suppose I’ll have to show you how it’s done.”  
He scrambled away from her then, resting on his knees beside the bed. His pride stung, but after a moment he realized what she was about and he settled. His heels dug into the curve of his ass, and he ached. It was not unpleasant.

Shasi sat up and rose to her own knees then, turning away to rummage in the chest on the ledge next to her bed. Her tail caught him across the face, swishing carelessly, and then its tufted tip danced over his chest. She had a harness of her own, and still more toys, and groaned softly as she strapped up.

This was a new threshold of ownership, he realized. He yearned for it with desperate ardor, and it seemed to take her far, far too long to select her toy and secure it in place. He had not been forbidden to look at her, and so he drunk in the sight of her broad back and strong shoulders. She had not spoken of whatever change had compelled her to lay aside the red mage’s foil in favor of a blade both broader and heavier—the sort of thing _he_ might have used, though he would have needed only one hand to bear it—but it had transmogrified her. She was tuned darker—and had had to be, he realized, given the ordeals conveyed to him secondhand from some other shard.

Ah, but he knew, didn’t he? What whispered in her heart? She had begged him to take that knowledge from her. His hand drifted toward her wrists, and found them bare. They were alone, then, though there was a part of him that thrilled at the idea of some unseen voyeur. He wanted her to claim him—and he wanted someone to bear witness, to _know_ him so owned.

For now it was enough that she knew.

She turned around, and reached out to haul him forward, pressing his head down and into the mattress. “Present yourself,” she said, and he arched, lifting his ass. He could feel the shifting weight as she slung her legs over the side and then stood. Her nails trailed over his back, and then she raked them down over the curve of his ass and he could not help the sound that escaped him. He lifted a hand as though to cover his welts—though the mottled bruising must have spread much too far for that—and then he spread himself open.

She took hold of the plug then, and jostled it inside him. He whimpered in response, bucking his hips instinctively.  
“How shameless,” she said, cracking him across the flank with the back of one hand. He jumped, a groan escaping him, and then schooled himself to stillness. She pulled the plug out, and he felt empty, a low whine escaping him. He _was_ shameless, and the anticipation only made him more so.

Shasi pressed her fingers into him, slick with lube, and they met no resistance. He could hear the laughter dancing in the back of her throat, not quite escaping her except in the way she breathed, and she stretched him and stroked him, slickening his flesh anew.

“Domina,” he groaned. “I need you.”  
“Don’t you always,” she purred.  
“Yes,” Zenos murmured. “But I need you to take me. To make me yours.”  
“You are always mine,” she reminded him, her fingers pressing sharply against his prostate.  
He could not answer her then, moaning long and low, fighting to remain still, afraid then that he might come. “Yes, Domina,” he said at last. “I am. But I want …” What did he want? Her to fuck him? That was one thing, but that wasn’t the answer she would want of him. She would want to know why. “I want to give myself to you. I want you to own me like this, too.”  
“Whether or not I choose to take it, every part of you belongs to me.”  
“Yes, Domina,” he moaned. “But please. Please let me give this to you.”

Her hand was almost gentle as she reached up to brush his hair aside. “You’re already mine,” she said. Then she said, “I’ll prove it to you,” and she entered him. Her hands closed on his hips, her nails digging into his skin, pulling him back against her, onto the slickness of her shaft. He had thought the plug prepared him—and in a way it had, but the physical resistance was less important than the mental realization that she was going to bury herself in him, and she was not going to stop until she was satisfied. It was a wider stretch and a far deeper pressure; she filled him in a way foreign to him, and his cheeks burned and his eyes watered. “You wanted this,” she reminded him.  
“I do want it, Domina,” he groaned, arching back against her.  
“You’re desperate for it,” she laughed. “You are so greedy. This isn’t about you giving me anything at all, I think.”  
“I need you,” he whimpered. “Please, please fuck me. Please show me how.”  
“I’ll show you,” she growled. “And the next time you fuck me, you had better make it count.”

Her small hands took hold of his hips, pulling him back so that she could grind herself against him, bottoming out in him. He could feel the ring that held the dildo in place, cool and hard amidst the fire of pain, because it _hurt_ to have her pressed against his bruises like that.

Still trapped inside the harness, his cock throbbed.

He expected no reprieve and she offered none, setting a punishing pace even from the first. He shuddered—not just from the sensations that gripped him, but because he felt in that moment the depths of his submission. Zenos braced himself with his aching thighs, pressing back against her, and let his chest fall to the bed, burying his face against the sheets to stifle the low moans that escaped him.

Shasi dug her thumb in at the place where his ass and thigh met, her nail like a razor against his welts, and he growled with pain. “None of that,” she told him. “Those sounds you make belong to me. I want them, too.” Then her hand crept up over the broad muscles of his back, and she stretched to grasp his hair at the scalp once more, hauling him up by it.  
“Yes, Domina,” he moaned. The angle of the position changed the feeling somewhat, and she pressed hard against his prostate, wringing another moan from him. “I’m going to come,” he panted.  
“You are not,” she said.

His moan transmuted then to a wail of despair, his eyes closing as though that might dampen his need. But even with his eyes screwed shut he could hear her breathing in time with her thrusts, feel the heat of it feather over his back; the burning in his scalp; the sweet ache of his bruises every time she buried herself in him. His thighs trembled, and his cock ground against the padded leather of his harness. He set his teeth against it.

Her breath grew hotter and more immediate, and then her lips brushed his skin. Her teeth followed shortly thereafter—not simply grazing or scraping, but sinking into his flesh as though she meant to anchor herself by her bite. All the while she fucked him, tugging him back, pushing him away, and he arched against her, taking her. Her moans were a softer echo of his own, which seemed to fill the whole of the room.

Sweat trickled between his shoulder blades, and when it rolled over the curve of his ass it stung, which did not surprise him. But when she let up on his back, only to sink her teeth in somewhere else, he could feel salt in those wounds too. A groan escaped him at the realization—this was something so bestial, so feral, that she threatened to tear him apart, and he welcomed it. He found himself pleading as her tongue traced her bite marks, and he swore he could feel the different way her tongue danced over each indent.

Despite her hold on him he was shaking, panting, desperate. His thighs quivered and his cock ached and he knew that if he could just arch himself forward, just grind himself once against the edge of the mattress it would all be over—and then he was empty. So she must have known it too.

Zenos didn’t dare move then, his broad hands crushing the bed in his grip. He could not even breathe for a long moment, and through the roar of blood in his ears he could hear the jangle of buckles falling into a heap.

“Sit back,” she said.  
He had to move then, and counted it miraculous that he did not merely collapse onto his back atop the floor, carpets skidding. Instead he managed to settle on his heels, head lolling as he struggled for his breath.  
She tutted, and he lifted himself that torturous ilm, his muscles roaring in protest. She had found the limits of his endurance, it seemed; he had not known he had them. “Open your eyes,” she told him then.

He did, and found her splayed atop the bed before him, her back against the far wall, her heels braced against the bed frame. Her legs spread wide, he could not help but to see the dampness of her curls, pressed down against her puffy labia. There were red marks at her waist, where the buckles of her harness had pressed against her skin. A smear of crimson marred her chin. Zenos took a deep breath through parted lips.

“Domina,” he groaned.  
Her eyes were wide open, fixed upon his. She licked her lips, her gaze tracing the lines of his body. “Take the harness off,” she said.  
“Yes, Domina.” He fumbled with it, his hands trembling, and he dared not do it fast in any case. He was far, far too close for that. Still, when he freed himself of it he could not help the way he groaned and twitched.

Her hands skimmed over her body, not pausing. Her muscular arms bracketed her breasts, pressing them together as she ran two fingers along her slit, coating them readily in her own honey.  
“Let me taste you,” Zenos panted.  
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she wondered. “I don’t think I will. You’re not going to touch me at all, in fact.” He groaned in despair, and her lips twitched upward in a cruel smile. “Gods. Look at you—still so in need. If you touched yourself now, how quickly would you come?”  
“Soon,” he groaned, pressing his hands to his thighs as though he could rub away the ache with the heels of his palms.  
“But not immediately,” she purred. She withdrew her fingers, petting at her vulva and swirling the tip of her middle finger over her clitoral hood.  
“No … no, Domina,” he said, eyelids fluttering. The sight of her was too much.  
“Don’t look away,” she told him, and he wrenched his eyes open. “Touch yourself,” she said. “Give me something to look at.”

It seemed almost a torment to wrap his hand about the base of his cock and stroke himself root to tip. The head of him was slick with pre, sticky against his fingers as he smeared it down over his shaft.  
“Less hand,” she said, “more hips. I want to watch you grind yourself against your fingers.”  
His body ached and still he leapt to obey, lifting himself to thrust against the loose grip of his hand. She moaned softly at the sight, or perhaps at the way she buried her fingers in her cunt once more, pressing her thumb against her clit. Her free hand found his chin, forcing his gaze toward her body. He wanted to open his mouth and lick at her fingers; to be allowed, even in that small way, to touch her, but she had forbid it. All he could do was watch her arch against the wall and the heave of her chest as she panted.

She was so, so close to him, he swore he could feel the heat of her even with a fulm or two of mattress between them. He ached to close the distance, to feel her smothering heat at last even as he frotted himself against his hand. Zenos groaned. “I’m close,” he said.  
“Then stop,” she moaned, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

He did, though the ache that surged through him felt like it might kill him. His head fell forward, his unbound hair spilling about his shoulders, but she gripped his chin and lifted it once more, fixing his gaze to hers. Her eyes were open, staring him down, and he could feel her drink in the sight of him, as though she could feel his racing pulse.

“You’re filthy,” she said. It was true, he had to imagine. The sweat had cooled upon his skin, but for the places where it still trickled; his hair was lank and damp. Blood smeared his cheek—and probably his back and maybe even his ass, though he couldn’t imagine how he could tell between the bruises. To say nothing of the lubricant still clinging to his skin.  
“Yes, Domina,” he said.  
Her hand slid from his chin to the base of his neck, fingers pressing against his sore scalp. He moaned involuntarily at the pain, sensation prickling along his spine. His cock twitched. “You would let me do anything to you right now.”  
“Yes, Domina,” he groaned. “I meant it when I said it.”  
“I want to watch you fuck yourself,” she said. Her hand slipped from his hair to fondle her own chest.

He wrapped his hand around his cock once more, arching and pumping himself. He wanted to close his eyes, but dared not—not simply because of her injunction, but because he could not bear to tear his gaze from the tableau of her spread before him, masturbating with an ardor as desperate as his own. Sooner than he might have liked, a moan escaped him.  
“You’re so easy to turn into a whimpering mess,” she said, panting. “The crown prince … would they recognize you?” Shasi wondered, her gaze flicking upward to fix upon the third eye. “Now that you’re yourself again … do you think they’d realize it was you, if they saw you? The eikon-slayer’s whore?”  
He groaned. Heat surged through him, and he felt himself throb against his hand. “Yes,” he said. And what was more … “I want them to.”  
“Do you?” she asked, the words breathless.

But he did not answer her right away, because he saw the way her back arched, her teeth set. She would not have heard, in the grips of her orgasm, grinding herself against her hand, her cunt clutching at her fingers. He felt so lucky to get to bear witness, to imagine that he, in some small way, had contributed to her pleasure. The sight was a gift to him, and he drank it in, silent but not still, until her eyes opened again.

“Yes, Domina,” he said. “It feels … so obvious to me, as though it would be impossible to look at me and not know I belong to you.” He ground the words out between his teeth, staving off sensation, but it was a heady thought, especially combined with all he had seen and done since she had opened the door and dragged him into her domain. He bit at his lip, but dared not muffle the moan that escaped him.  
“You must be close,” Shasi said, lifting her hand to her mouth. With casual deliberateness, she licked at her fingers, her bright blue eyes fixed upon him.  
“I am,” he whimpered.  
“Well?” she said, arching a brow. “Stop.” He did, and then she said, “Beg me to let you come.”  
“Domina,” he said, the word a low grown. Almost a supplication. A prayer, born from lips to which prayer was forbidden. “Please, please, let me come,” he said. No, that wasn’t it. “Please make me come; I need that. By your hand.”  
“I don’t want to touch you,” she scoffed.  
“No, Domina,” he said. He braced his free hand against the mattress, drawing himself up. His head fell forward, and her gaze hardened. He lifted his chin, exposing his throat, his eyes fixed upon hers. “No, I meant … I belong to you and … my hands are your hands. Any release you allow me is release you have given me.” He gasped sharply. His whole body trembled. The knot in his stomach was painfully tight.  
“Your orgasms belong to me,” she said, a wicked smile spreading over her lips. “Why shouldn’t I keep them? Why should I let you have one?”  
“Because,” he groaned. Because he felt like he might die? He wouldn’t. He would endure whatever she asked. Anything she asked.

“Because?” she prompted, settling in a reclining position, as though she cared little about his desperation, his trembling.  
“Because,” he replied, desperately wracking his brain. What should he be thinking about? “Because it … would please you,” Zenos said, groaning.  
“Touch yourself,” she said.  
He whimpered in relief and anguish, wrapping his hand around his cock. “Thank you, Domina.”  
“I didn’t say you could come,” she pointed out. “Don’t thank me yet. What if I don’t want you to come?”  
“Then,” he panted. It was so hard to think, grinding himself against his hand. It was so hard not to come. “Then never let me come … ever again.”  
“I still have your cage,” she said.

His eyes widened in surprise. She laughed at the sight.  
“Still?” he wondered.  
“All this time,” she said. “Should I put you back in it? Never let you out again?”  
“If that’s what you want,” Zenos said. His breath came in shallow gasps, his shoulders quaking. “If you don’t want me to come, then tell me to stop …” He looked down at her, head bowed, pleading with his eyes for her mercy, but she said nothing, only watched him stroke himself. Every muscle in his body was wound taut. “Make it stop, Domina,” he begged her. “Please, please tell me to stop.”  
“No,” she said.  
He let out a cry of anguish, and only then did he consider it strange how desperate he was then to be denied the very thing he had sought all night. “I can’t stop unless you order me to,” he said. There was something mewling in the words. “And I can’t come unless you grant me leave.”  
“I know,” Shasi said.  
“_Please,_” he whimpered. “Please stop me.”  
She only looked at him, and he looked back through a haze of tears and the blurring of his lashes. It was so much effort then to keep his eyes open, but he dared not break from her gaze. She said nothing, and he pumped his cock and ached. Her expression was closed and cold.

He wanted to collapse against her, to press his forehead to hers as the tears ran over his cheeks, to bury his hand in her hair and hold her close as he begged her—for release, for denial, for anything at all she might give him, but he had his orders. They tore at him, sharper than her teeth or nails. “Domina,” he whimpered. “Make it stop, please.”

“Come for me, Zenos,” she said, and he body obeyed with a swiftness he had not anticipated. His cock jerked, ropes of his seed staining the bed sheets and clinging to his fingers, surging out of him with heat and swiftness such that he shuddered all over, the moan escaping him drowning out all else. Through it all she watched his face with detached interest, making no move to aid him nor to draw away.

It left him empty, feeling almost hollow. Satisfaction soon filled him, commingling with gratitude—peace—exhaustion. He longed for her touch as ever, but dared not ask. Her eyes were still upon him, her expression still expectant.

“What a mess,” she said. “Lick it up.”  
He felt his cheeks burning, but he lifted his hand to his mouth, sucking at his fingers. He could taste himself, salt and musk on his tongue, but that was not the only reason he groaned as he lowered his face to the mattress, tongue slipping out between his too-dry lips to lave over the worn cotton of the sheets. Every ilm of him ached, and that ache would only deepen; it would be days of his body remembering all that had passed this night. It was a welcome thought.

He could not look up at her as he sucked his seed from the cloth, so when he lifted his head it was a terrible surprise to find her cheeks damp, the perfect mirror of the tear-tracks drying upon his own skin.

Panic twisted his stomach, and for a moment he froze, unsure of what to do. Words failed him, but the answer came—he put his hand to her thigh and tapped three times, like a gladiator calling it quits. That only made her sob harder, and he pulled himself up into the bed, sitting between her splayed legs.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice hoarse.  
“Do you hate me?” she wondered. Tears strangled her voice, making it quaver. He had not heard her so distraught since their last night in the conservatory.  
“No,” he said, and then, to make clear where he stood, he said, “No, Shasi. Never in my life. Why should I?”  
She lifted a trembling hand, and it hung in the air between them, as though she dared come no closer.

That wasn’t right—that she should fear to touch him. She had always had that freedom, even as she robbed him of the same, with bonds and with words. He was not so bound now—they were at ends—so he reached up to take hold of her wrist and pressed her palm to his cheek. She sobbed. Her thumb grazed the little scab upon his cheek—the cut she had opened with her ring in the very earliest part of their evening.

“The things I do to you …”  
“I ask for them,” Zenos told her. “I want them. Sometimes I need them.”  
“I killed you,” she whimpered.  
“I asked for that too.” Seeing the way her brow twisted, he ached. “Perhaps I asked too much of you. Then and now.”  
“No,” she said, sighing. Her thumb stroked his cheek once more. “I wanted this. I made this happen.”

He ached, and wanted nothing more than to stretch out and relax. “Lie down with me,” he said, gently putting a hand to her back. It felt so strange to shepherd her, but they laid there, side by side, until he pulled her to his chest. She pressed her ear against him, velvet-soft, to hear the beating of his heart.

“That is yours too,” he said softly. “It leaps for no other.”  
“Why do you give me things to ruin?” she asked.  
“Is that what you imagine,” he drawled. “I could never hate you,” he said again. “I love you. And I love this.”  
“_Because_ you love me?”  
He shook his head, cradling her head against his chest. “I went without it for two years.”  
“Because I wouldn’t do anything Thancred didn’t know about,” she murmured. “That doesn’t bother you?”  
“I know you,” Zenos said. “I know you perhaps better than anyone, and you know me just as well. You do remember that.”  
“I thought you might not come back,” she whispered. “From Garlemald.”  
“I came back from death itself,” Zenos told her. “A few bruises that I begged you for will not dissuade me.”

Shasi buried her face against the side of his neck, nuzzling against a scar that had faded to be almost indistinguishable from his flesh.  
“You missed me,” Zenos said after a moment.  
“I wanted to make up for lost time,” she murmured.  
He laughed softly. “I should say that you did.”  
“Except that now I’ve ruined it …”  
“No,” Zenos murmured. “There is a great deal to look back on with fondness, and this is one of those things. You have given me the chance to accept you, and I do. What do you need?”  
“I should be asking you that,” Shasi protested. Her sigh feathered over his skin, grown cool now after the sweat dried.  
“I have what I need,” Zenos said.

She turned her face as though to hide it, her ears pressed back briefly. As though she was ashamed of what she would say next. “I need you to stay,” she said.  
He wondered for a moment where she thought he would go. “I am here,” he said, and was surprised to find that was enough.


End file.
